Bert Wootton “Day in the Life” part + interview
You’ve undoubtedly seen a video part or some tricks in an edit of Bert Wootton on your screen in the past 15 years, or maybe you saw Rob Wootton (same guy, but we’ll get into that later), but either way, this Floridian puts in work: he’s a footage machine. Whether he’s skating in Kazakhstan, Orlando, LA or Cuba, filmers love him as he’s so consistent. Clips, clips, clips he gets, much to everyone’s delight, but it’s really just to feed his skateboarding addiction. In his mid-thirties and still belting out parts after parts, there’s no sign of Bert slowing down. No pro board: no problem. I had to know more, so I hit up Mr Wootton last week to find out what keeps him hyped.
Interview by Will Harmon
Good morning, how are you?
Chillin’, posted up at work right now.
Hanging doors?
That is what I do. I started my own company four months ago now, hanging doors. Following in my dad’s footsteps.
Nice. So the reason I wanted to interview is because I’ve been following your skating for years. Like, you’ve had so many parts, and I see you clips everywhere, but I don’t really know much about you. So can we just start with an introduction from yourself?
My name’s Bert Wootton. I grew up in Florida and I’m 36 now, and, yeah, I just grew up skating in Orlando.
How did you get into skating? Any Florida skaters influence you?
I started skating for the funniest reason, I remember I was in the car with my with my mom and her family from England, were, like, going shopping at these corporate strip malls, and we pulled in, and it’s really first time I’d ever seen skating in person, and a dude just ollied up a curb and powerslid for a second, and spooked this entire family that was walking, and I was like, “I wanna do that.”
Haha, yeah sick.
So then once I started skating it was more like, local dudes that I’d see at the parks and be blown away by seeing it in person. Eventually a dude that my sister was dating gave me this box of VHS tapes, because he was quitting skating, and the dude gave me Real to Reel and Mouse. So clearly those two videos had such a big impact on me, I would even say more Real to Reel than anything.
So this is early 2000s or late ‘90s era?
I guess. My inner calendar is just completely broken. I’m so bad with dates…
Switch log-jam. Ph. Stephen Knight
Haha, all good. What age did you film your first video part and who filmed it?
I went to a new school for middle school in this town called Chuluota and I met the only other kid there that skated. His name was Glenn, we just became best friends and then started skating together. His brother filmed and skated as well, and he was like, probably, like, three or four years older than us, and we made a video called POOP, and it stood for: People Opposing On Police. And I cannot find it for the life of me here, but I skated to a Mike Jones song.
Haha, sick. Grant (Yansura) said that he told me he lived with you for a year in Orlando when he was studying film at university. When he and many other Florida skaters made the move out to Cali, did you go with them right away?
So when Grant moved from south Florida, he moved to Orlando, he was going to UCF. I went to his dorm one day, because I would sneak into their food hall where he had a pass, and then I would eat at UCF for free every day. Then I went to his dorm one day, and I was like, “Bro, my parents have a room at their house. Come live at the crib. Like, you’ll have your own setup. You’ll have your own bathroom, bro. These are shitty living conditions.” So he ended up coming out and living there, and then we just skated so much, dude. I remember there were times with Grant where he was like, “I gotta have this done. I have to do this work.” I’m like, “Oh, let’s go film a clip!”
Haha.
I kinda felt a little bad afterwards, but then it all worked out, because then he got the gig at The Berrics. Grant was working as an intern or something, they were testing him out. And, yeah, we decided to drive across the country together, and we stayed out there, and Grant and I lived at The Berrics for like, dude… I don’t know how long it was, but it was too long.
Did you already have sponsors at this time? Were your sponsors like, “Yeah, you should come to Cali.”?
Scuba (Steve) said I should come out. So Grant and I both went out there at the same time, and I don’t even remember who I was getting boards from at the time, I want to say Organika.
How long did you stay in California?
So around this time I was, like, going out there, staying for a bit, then I would come back to Florida. Florida was my home base. Basically I would make some money in Florida, and they’d be like, “Yo, fuck it. I’m gonna go spin this, and then I’m gonna come back and be absolutely broke.” I was always very fortunate that my dad ran a business where I was able to do that, you know, like, I had so many friends that wouldn’t be able to pull that because they can’t leave work for however long. But my dad would be like, “Oh yeah, you got some money. You need to go take off.” And then I would go out there sometimes for a month, sometimes only two weeks. Sometimes it would be like, three months. And then eventually I came home. I was here in Orlando. Grant had already moved out there for good.
You didn’t want to make the permanent move?
Around this time I was in a seven-year relationship, and I was trying to convince her to move out there. And then one day I was just driving out of my neighbourhood, and something clicked. I was going to skate the park at night or something, I remember the exact moment, and I went over this hill and I turned my high beams on, and I was like, “Dude, I’ve turned my fucking high beams on every day at this same exact spot. I need something different. I’m so programmed.” That’s when it clicked. I just asked her, “Hey, I want to go out West. You want to go with me?” And she’s like, “Nah, I’m not doing it.” She was super timid, super close with her family, and not really feeling it. So I just said, “All right, well, I’m out.” And I literally just left.
Had to make a change.
Yeah, so when I first drove out there, I had my SUV and I was crashing with homies for a while, but I’d never wait for someone to be like, “All right, you gotta go.” But I’d crash with a homie for four or five nights, and often situations were pretty hectic, so I’d go to the next homie, just couch surfing wherever the best wave was, you know? And then I ended up staying at Austyn Gillette’s house for a bit, Johan (Stuckey) was living there, so I just crashed there for a bit, which was pretty sick. They were, like, building out a jam room and they were always on some missions. Around that time, Erica (Yary) and I started dating, and then I ended up moving with her to Costa Mesa. And then I think we were there for a little over six months or something, before we moved to Long Beach and got our own spot together.
Grant said it was an odd time for you, you were finding yourself or whatever, you had a Man bun/top knot and looked like a biker when you were dating Erica Yary, but then around then you had a rebirth, and changed your name to Rob.
I’m gonna fight Grant for that, haha! But yeah that’s spot on. The name change thing was pretty early into being out in California.
Your buddy Keith (Gibbs) said that you texted everyone saying, “I’m Rob now.” haha.
Maybe, like in a group text or something, haha. Definitely like when the “Name Changer” part came out or whatever, I don’t know, my memory is pretty shot, but yeah, I definitely remember it was pretty obvious from the get-go that it wasn’t gonna happen. No one gives a fuck what you want to be called if you’ve been called the same thing for so long.
Keith says he was actively fighting against it. Why did you want to change it? I mean, obviously your real name’s Robert, right?
My name is Robert, yeah, I guess the name Bert to me… It’s weird to have a name when you, introduce yourself and some people genuinely laugh. I’m like, what the fuck? Like my name is Pebbles or something, bro! People laughed, and then also my dad’s name is Robert. I respect my dad. He was Robert when he was younger, and then he became a Bob. I’m gonna be a Bob one day. Whenever I really have my shit together, I’m gonna tell everybody, like, “I’m Bob now.” Haha.
So when you introduce yourself to people now, what do you say?
It’s always Bert, definitely in the skate world at least. But in construction, if I’m working or whatever… When I first got my business card made it says Rob. So everybody calls me Rob in the construction world.
There’s a character in the movie Fracture, with your exact same name. Where does ‘Wootton” originate from?
I have no idea. I’ve never done a 23andMe. I don’t know anything about the name. I’ve never looked up what my family crest looks like, but I imagine it has a lion on it. But it was crazy, I was sitting in the theatre and I lost my mind… I had a decent little buzz, and I’m sitting there watching that movie and I had no idea it was coming up. And it’s like, Ryan Gosling and he says: “You going to Bert Wootton’s charity event?” And I was like, “Oh, fuck!” I lost my shit. I was screaming in the theatre, and people were looking at me, and I just had to be like, “Yep, that’s my name.” It was so random.
I read in another interview that you’ve made a little money from skating in the past, but not really enough to survive. You mentioned, when we first started talking, that you took over your dad’s business of hanging doors. Is that the thing that’s been paying the bills all these years?
Oh no, no. I have been working side gigs and side hustles my entire life. And even though I didn’t make money off skating, I really did my best to just barely get by and just be able to skate and not miss out on trips. I was always being as frugal as I could with the money I did have to make it last as long as I could, to be able to skate when the homies were skating, to travel when their homies were travelling, and then just yeah, come home broke and then work again. But starting my own door business is relatively new within the past four months.
Backside 180. Ph. Stephen Knight
Your friends talked a lot about your keen interest in vintage items and clothing and flipping that stuff.
Yeah, I did that. As a matter of fact, the first time I went out to LA, I didn’t even know if I was gonna be able to go with Grant, but the way I got the money was: I went into an antique store, and this guy had just dropped off a box of cameras, and I offered the lady, like, $50 for the entire box. She might have wanted a little more in the beginning, but we came to an agreement or something, I didn’t really know, but there were just a bunch of old cameras and a couple lenses too, I just didn’t want to sift through them right then. So I sold one of the lenses for 300 bucks and I’m like, “Boom, there’s gas money and food.” And then I sold one of the cameras for 200 bucks, just racking it up. It seemed like mad money back then. I probably made 1500 bucks off of that box alone. And that’s what funded my first trip out there, but I’ve always been addicted to that stuff.
What gave you the idea to make money like this?
As long as I can remember my mom’s been one of the first big sellers on eBay, like, where she said, “I’m gonna do this full time.” My mom worked for a graphic design company, and then she quit there, she was a stay at home mom for a while, but then it became her side hustle to do exactly what I do now. She would do it with vintage tablecloths and linens and pretty much anything. We would drive to these estate sales in her SUV and it would be completely empty, and then on the way back, she’d be driving, I’d be in the passenger seat, and we couldn’t even see out the back window, it was just filled with vintage linen reeking like cigarette smoke. She would get home, clean them all, get rid of stains, get rid of everything, and then just list them on eBay. She’d be so hyped, like, “I bought this tablecloth for maybe 50 cents, and I just sold it for 100 bucks.”
Wow, and so you learned from that…
Yeah, I was constantly going to these (estate) sales, and then one time I bought a Canon T50 camera for five bucks. I just decided that I was gonna take my chances on this thing and just buy it, then I started shooting with it and I just became such a camera nerd. I would buy every camera that I saw. I still have hundreds of cameras right now. I kind of quit selling them. I just kept collecting them, you know, because I really am a hoarder. But when I get broke, I just sell the stuff I have. So I just learned that way. You buy something, you research it, you either sell it or save it. I was doing the cameras only for a while, and then I just started buying clothes for myself that I liked. And then, like, there wasn’t much of a market for that then, but I would collect old clothes, because I thought it was dope. And then as that stuff started being worth money, I had quite a few concert shirts of old bands, so I would sell that stuff. It kind of just became this whole thing to where now I have a whole room dedicated to it at my house of just clothes that I’ve collected over the years.
Wow nice. I’m guessing Florida’s so good for that kind of thing, because there’s so many old people that go there to retire, and obviously they pass away at some point.
It’s getting harder, the vintage clothes market… Before people started posting this shit online, it was so much better, you know what I mean? Back then every garage sale I would go to, it felt like I was the first person there.
People have caught on then.
God, my whole entire market is so blown out. Like, I don’t even know if I’d be doing doors right now if people still didn’t know, dude, I’d be making bank. It was just too easy and so fun, especially for me. So I’d pick this random little coastal town, and then I knew there’s a skatepark over there… So what I would do is spend the whole first part of the morning, from like 7am ‘til 12 hitting yard sales, and then I’d hit thrift stores for the next, like, two or three hours, and then grab some food in the area and look for skate spots, or hit a park or something; that’s such a great day. Just explore these towns and find spots, you know?
So you must have found so many spots that way, huh? In these little, tiny Florida towns…
Yeah. That was the main method: just putting myself in new areas, and then taking time to drive around.
What was it like skating in Florida during the pandemic? Because I remember your governor, Ron DeSantis, didn’t really enforce many of the government recommended quarantine guidelines.
We made a video at that time; it’s called Local Watering Hole. No one knew what this was yet, we all just knew that there’s this thing going around. And then we’re just like, “Well, yeah, the spliff was going around last night too. So if one of us has it, we all have it. Like, what the fuck is this?” And then we all just kind of banded together, like, “Fuck it. This is our crew. No outsiders. Let’s all just post up and wait and see what this is,” you know? I don’t know if this is going to be frowned upon, but we had our crew of about seven, maybe eight or nine people, and we just kept skating and travelling. We would go into a Publix and get food, and that’s the only time you had to wear a mask, for a minute, and then, go in, grab your shit, get out, and then get back in the van. And then, once you’re in the van, two people were sharing drinks, etc. We were all just around each other, camping every night, skating, whatever. And we put an entire edit out during that time.
Were people giving you shit though, when they saw you out skating?
Not to get too political, but you know, but we’ve got super far left, super far right, and it’s like, everybody’s here. I don’t know, you walk into a grocery store and you walk down one aisle and some lady will be like, “Where’s your mask?” And you’re like, “Oh, my bad.” You put a mask on. You walk down the next aisle and then some guy’s like, “Nice mask, bitch.” And you’re like, “Dude, what?” It’s just classic Florida. I mean we’re somewhat immune to that shit: people giving you a hard time.
Did you guys get to skate any spots you hadn’t normally skated?
Oh my God, dude yes, it was this Sprint building. There’s a giant section in that video of us skating the spot, and now it’s almost in every video, because the company didn’t really thrive too well through COVID, to the point where they had to shut down. But they took away their security, they fully shut down. I don’t know if this will stand out to you, but it’s like the wallies with the banks up to it. It’s a bank to wallie and you can hit the ledge…
Yeah, you got tricks on that in your new part. That spot looks unbelievable.
I mean, that spot is very hard to skate. Before, anytime we were driving by, we would just get out and run up and skate it for as long as we could. No one would really try and film, because you’re not going to get something good enough in that span of time. But it was always just a quick boot, with security bugging on the phone with the cops immediately. And yeah, we went during COVID, and we fully cut out the rails at one point to skate it, like a bank to ledge. We were just getting mad time to the point where we would just sit out there, drink beers, kick a soccer ball to warm up, and skate it all night. Because the bars were closed, it was like our new bar.
Organika, Nike SB, Converse, Spitfire, High-5, Alien, Element… You’ve had a lot of sponsors and I’m sure I’ve forgotten some…
Commune was the first company that paid me. That was pretty crucial around the time. It was only like 300 bucks a month or something, but it was fucking good.
Anything helps. That’s one or two days less you have to work. You can be out skating…
And if every company did that, that you rode for, you’d be chilling for a second, especially for like some little flow, or am dude.
Keith says there’s an interesting story about your Spitfire sponsorship. Do you want to tell that one?
Yeah, It was pretty weird… So I started getting Spitfire wheels from MIckey Reyes. He started giving me Spitfire Wheels. And I was like, “fuck yeah!” He sent me a box and it was, like the fattest; I want to say there was 12 sets of wheels or something. And even growing up a little on the broke side, like, I’ve always been very frugal. So even getting a package of 12 wheels… In hindsight, I should have skated the wheels for a little bit and then given them away to a homie, you know, yeah, give them to somebody. But dude, I would just skate these wheels until they were like… I mean I had 11 sets of Spitfires at the house, and I have people like, “Dude, what is up with your wheels?” And I’m like, “They’re chilling, I’m good.”
You’d just wait until they’re fully done. Yeah, I understand that.
I’d wait until they were fully done. Like, I’m getting comments at Cherry Park like, “Dude, what the fuck bro! Do you need wheels?” I’m like, “No, I got mad sets at the crib. Like, gonna swap them out, like, in a month or something,” you know? But it got to the point where, like, 12 sets of wheels, whatever he sent me, lasted so long that by the time I hit him back up, they thought I had quit. “We heard you quit. Like, you just quit hitting us up.” I was like, “Well, yeah, it’s been a year, but you gave me so many fucking wheels.”
Oh man… That’s tragic.
Even then I still had a couple sets. I was hitting them up in advance. I’ve always felt weird about asking for free stuff.
Ollie up then frontside flip. Ph. Stephen Knight
Your friends said you’re always a bit timid talking to your sponsors. Is that true?
I’ll talk to them every day. If it’s like, “Yo How you been?” Like, “What’s good? What are you up to?” Like, fuck yeah, good vibes. But then if I have to hit somebody up and ask for free stuff, man, I’ve always just felt, I don’t know… I’ve always felt like, you know, work for what you got. And I guess you are working, you’re skating and doing what you need to do, but it just feels weird to ask for free product. Yeah, it’s always been a weird thing for me.
Do you look back and think that attitude has kind of hurt you?
Yeah, of course, man. Especially in hindsight, for sure, it would have kept relationships going and it would have just been tighter. For example, Jamie Thomas was here recently, and he was talking about the Zero dudes, and he was like, “Yeah, I know exactly who’s skating and who’s not skating by how much stuff they get.” I was like, “Hey, hold up. You can’t go by that!”
Some people just prefer to skate their stuff a long time, maybe for sustainability’s sake.
Yeah, and you might have somebody on the team that’s focusing boards, you don’t know.
I have a lot of respect for people who let their skating do the talking, without shouting about themselves all the time. But in this day and age, do you feel like you have to play the game on social media to make it these days in sponsored skateboarding?
It’s not even that I feel like that, it’s just blatantly obvious.
Not many hard posts on your Insta Bert, haha.
I hit like two a year at this point. I think people are figuring it out man. I mean, fuck, I don’t want to be too vulgar, but you can only suck your own dick for so long until your back starts to hurt.
It’s just such a different time than when I grew up in the ‘90s, where it was the absolute opposite: you could not talk about yourself at all.
Even when Instagram first came out… So I deleted a bunch of stuff off my Instagram. I kind of went through a big reset, but I was talking about that with Chris Blake… We’ve been skating together since we were little kids. But we were talking about: remember when you couldn’t post yourself on your own Instagram? My Instagram basically looked like Chris’s platform of his skating…
And vice versa, his Instagram was a platform of your skating I’m sure. Yeah, you had to buddy up with a friend.
Those were such better times and everything seemed more genuine. But now, yeah, I don’t know you, that’s kids’ sponsor me reels. Like dude, for any art or for any sport, like that’s it, that’s how you get discovered at this point. I don’t know, it just feels so unnatural.
Santa Cruz wanted to give you a pro board at Tampa Pro and have you skate in the contest as their newest Pro. But you turned them down. I want to ask, what were your reasons for saying no, and do you regret that decision?
I think this was 7-8 years ago, I was getting shoes from State at the time, and Matt Price and Andrew Cannon were the Santa Cruz TMs, and both of those dudes are the homies. So when they hit me up and they’re like, “Yo Santa Cruz doing a little rebranding,” and I was like, “It’s gonna be tough, but fuck yeah, sure, let’s give it a shot.” And they were mentioning who else was gonna be on and who they had budget for even. And I was like, “Holy shit.” Like, I’m not gonna throw names out there, but I was like, “Whoa, if you can make this happen, if you can get that guy from the company he’s been on for that long…” Like, all right, they got big dreams, but fuck it. “Let’s go!”
Sure thing!
Then I went on a little trip with those dudes. It was super good times. And what I’d verbally been told was: “Yeah, you’re gonna be the next guy on.” I’m thinking, “Okay, dope. Let’s see it. Let’s get it.” I’m thinking I’m gonna be the next Am. And then the trip ended in Tampa, and there I guess they had a little talk, like talked over with everyone else on the team. But there just before Tampa Pro they sprung it on me; “Hey, we want you to skate the contest. I was like, “Whoa, Tampa Pro? You guys know this is the pro contest?” They’re like, “Yeah, we want to give you a board and have you skate the contest.” And, you know, part of me was super grateful. Obviously, like, 99% of me was grateful. All of me was grateful. I’m like, “Fuck yeah. These people are hyped, and want me to represent the brand and have a board, this is the dream.” But also, back to the basic fundamentals, like you gotta reel yourself back in and be like, hold on a second, if I was sitting at home watching Tampa Pro: “Oh, they’re skating Tampa Pro. Oh, they’re Pro!” Like, to me, that’s not how you go pro. Hold on, let’s go back to the drawing board.
Backside flip. Ph. Stephen Knight
It’s a lot of pressure too, just to show up and skate in a pro contest.
I don’t think so. I know I’m not gonna do well, haha. I’m gonna fucking go out there and have fun. But you know, for me, pressure aside, is just more so this isn’t how I envision somebody going pro. The way I see it is you go back to the drawing board. You line it all up. You have the ad ready. You get a photo that you’re like, “This is the photo I want to have when I go pro…”
You film a big pro video part…
You film a part and it comes out with the board, and we line everything up, and it feels natural. And then we have a big party, and everybody has a good time and it feels like I get to host a party for everybody, for this event. Like, that’s my vision of becoming a pro skateboarder. Not: “Oh, skate this fucking contest!”
How did they react when you told them no?
They seemed pretty cool about it. They honestly didn’t care. But then it was only a short amount of time after that, I can’t remember exactly what it was, maybe they got some new some big investor that came in, but yeah they were like, “Yeah, we need to get some fucking 12-year-olds in the van.” So when you got like, a 29-year-old dude, or whatever I was at the time, they’re just like, “Who the fuck is this guy? We’re sending him what?”
You’re in your mid 30s now, and Keith said you’d always been the age where sponsors thought you were a little too old, even when you were 25. I know the opinions of the right ages of sponsoring skaters has changed slightly in the past few years, but do you ever think about at what age you were at your prime?
I definitely do. I think about how I wish my physical prime would have lined up with my mental prime and it would have been different… Like right now, if I was at my physical peak, I’d be able to produce a video part that I would deem worthy… Like, health insurance would have been nice… You get dropped from health insurance, and then you’re like, “Uh oh….” Dude, our healthcare system is trash. Like, one knee injury can have you changing your whole fucking life. My mental prime is right now, I guess the deterioration of my own body, I’m accepting it, but it’s just learning to be more selective. I’d say I’m in my prime right now.
Will you be okay with it all if you never go pro?
Oh I’m not going pro. That’s not why I started skateboarding; that’s not why I am still skateboarding. As a matter of fact, and I’m sure a lot of people that are currently making it right now will relate to this, but there’s this funny window of skateboarding being the most fun before I had duties to sponsorships, and then even more fun now afterwards. And there’s this kind of window in the middle where it really does, and people have said it time and time again, but when it starts to feel like a job. And you’re like, “Damn, the whole goal is to never work. But this is it. This is work.” And when you mix that in with financially struggling, you’re like, “Ah, I could be working way less hard, doing way less wear and tear to my body and be financially better off.” And you start to weigh out things… But for me, at least personally, skateboarding is a pretty serious addiction. There have been times where I have straight up said, “Alright, dude, I’m gonna put this video part out, then I gotta just crack the whip, get serious, be hard on myself, not give a fuck about skating, figure out my situation.” And then all it takes is one night, maybe I’ll just try a little, and then I watch a Nate Jones part, and I’m like, ”Ah fuck!” And then I’m addicted again.
So what are you doing for product these days? Are you just buying stuff or what’s the deal?
I’m gonna put Plus Skate Shop out of business if I have to keep taking their boards…
You’re giving them a lot of content, though, that’s gotta be worth something.
Yeah, the homie Jack Moran has been sending me Converse shoes. He’s another Florida dude that moved out west, holding it down. He’s been sending me shoes, which I’m super grateful for. And then, yeah, that’s where the long line of sponsors stops right now, I think.
I’m actually surprised you never rode Uma, as one of your besties is Evan Smith.
I want to take this opportunity to tell Evan to send me a box and just cut a check.
Haha. Do you think there’s any other amateurs out there who have filmed as many parts as you?
I hope not. They should be getting a check!
How many parts do you think you filmed in total?
Dude, I don’t know, man. It’s so bad, because I’m my own biggest critic in everything I do. I have maybe four parts that I would like… If someone’s like, “oh, have you put out parts?” I would only send somebody maybe four parts of where I’m like, “I’m okay with these ones.”
Which four?
Cosmic Vomit one and two, and then the Local Watering Hole one, and then the most recent part that I just filmed for the Plus video, Every Buddy In. And I have the part coming out with you guys that I’m super hyped on, because it was super refreshing to almost go back to the roots of Weekendtage, when Grant and I were doing that, and just making it fun. We did a little ‘day in the life’, making fun of how terrible those have been over the years.
Grant was thinking you’ve probably filmed 30 parts or something.
It probably is up there. I don’t know man, it’s bad.
I don’t think it’s bad. I think it’s good. But you’re saying there’s a lot of parts you look back on and you kind of cringe?
Not cringe, but I’m sure everyone goes through that… I’m sure musicians put an album out, and then they go back and they’re like, like, “Hold on, who was that? Who was that making that music? That’s not me.” You don’t realise it at the time, but afterwards, you’re like, “Damn I was going through some shit. Times were rough.” I don’t know, there’s been a few parts where I’ve known what’s driving me, to where I almost used skateboarding as a way to distract myself from things that were going on. It was my medication. And I did that for a big portion of my life, but you can only do that for so long. But you look back, and you’re just like. “Ah, did I really have to…” I guess what I mentioned earlier is being more selective. I used to think if I found a spot, I had to film something there. And then looking back, there’s so many spots and video parts where I’m like, “Fuck, that spot is so bad. Nobody needed to skate that.” Like I want to apologise to the filmers: “Yo, those two hours, I wish I could give them back to you.”
Would you have a hand at editing some of your parts? Or was it always kind of up to the filmers?
I would breathe over the editor’s shoulders too much maybe…
Ollie into the mini-bank. Ph. Stephen Knight
You’ve filmed so many video parts (with Daniel Wheatley, Grant Yansura, Shane Auckland, Kevin Perez, Jason Hernandez, etc.) and most of these filmers have gone on to make it quite big. Keith said I should ask you why you think you didn’t make it big like they did?
I know filmers complain about getting paid, but once you’re kind of in that circle, you’re the driving force. Teams can say, “Oh yeah, we got the team manager, and then we have the filmer.” A team manager is hardly ever going through it the way the filmers are, you know? The filmer is really the driving force of the team. Like, if the team manager is passed out in bed, the whole crew can function and go out and make it happen. Like, we all know how to skate, we all know how to eat and drink. Team managers don’t even really need to be on the trip, unless the dudes are piling that hard that somebody has to intervene. But a filmer, they’re essential, as soon as you get in, I feel like you deserve some money. But look at how many skateboarders get dragged along putting out video parts for years and years and years and then they just disappear. Like, some of the dudes that I thought were going to be the best, they’re just gone, because they’re like, “Alright, I’m not… This isn’t working for me. I’m not getting money.” And they probably had to move on. I just think it’s two different jobs, man.
I guess you’re right, but you’re also addicted to skateboarding, so it doesn’t matter if you’re not making money on it, you’re going to do it regardless, right?
I’m always going to do it. It’s like, I’m going to try and do it a little less, but right now I’m at the level where I can continue to put out video parts that I’m genuinely proud of, and someday I’m going to be to the level where I’m going to do the best frontside grind on a quarter pipe I’ve ever done. And someone’s going to be like, “God damn, a 70-year-old dude is getting it!” I’m gonna be some old dude at the park skating… I just love this shit
